The nearly forgotten story of the American Plan, a government program to regulate women’s bodies and sexuality—and how they fought back—told through the lens of one of its survivors
“A consistently surprising page-turner . . . a brilliant study of the way social anxieties have historically congealed in state control over women’s bodies and behavior.”—The New York Times Book Review
In 1918, shortly after her eighteenth birthday, Nina McCall was told to report to the local health officer to be examined for sexually transmitted infections. Confused and humiliated, Nina did as she was told, and the health officer performed a hasty (and invasive) examination and quickly diagnosed her with gonorrhea. Though Nina insisted she could not possibly have an STI, she was coerced into committing herself to the Bay City Detention Hospital, a facility where she would spend almost three miserable months subjected to hard labor, exploitation, and painful injections of mercury.
Nina McCall was one of many women unfairly imprisoned by the United States government throughout the twentieth century. Tens, probably hundreds, of thousands of women and girls were locked up—usually without due process—simply because officials suspected these women were prostitutes, carrying STIs, or just “promiscuous.”
This discriminatory program, dubbed the “American Plan,” lasted from the 1910s into the 1950s, implicating a number of luminaries, including Eleanor Roosevelt, John D. Rockefeller Jr., Earl Warren, and even Eliot Ness, while laying the foundation for the modern system of women’s prisons. In some places, vestiges of the Plan lingered into the 1960s and 1970s, and the laws that undergirded it remain on the books to this day.
Scott Stern tells the story of this almost forgotten program through the life of Nina McCall. Her story provides crucial insight into the lives of countless other women incarcerated under the American Plan. Stern demonstrates the pain and shame felt by these women and details the multitude of mortifications they endured, both during and after their internment. Yet thousands of incarcerated women rioted, fought back against their oppressors, or burned their detention facilities to the ground; they jumped out of windows or leapt from moving trains or scaled barbed-wire fences in order to escape. And, as Nina McCall did, they sued their captors. In an age of renewed activism surrounding harassment, health care, prisons, women’s rights, and the power of the state, this virtually lost chapter of our history is vital reading.
“A consistently surprising page-turner . . . a brilliant study of the way social anxieties have historically congealed in state control over women’s bodies and behavior.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“For those of us who decry today’s internationally unparalleled carceral crisis and wonder how we ended up here, Stern’s beautifully written account of the American Plan and the life of Nina McCall offers some need but uncomfortable answers.”
—The New York Review of Books
“A powerful report on a relevant women’s movement deservedly brought to light over a century after it occurred.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“McCall’s story is captivating as pure biography, but it is all the more remarkable documentarily.”
—The Times Literary Supplement
“Meticulously researched, utterly damning . . . The truths revealed in this book are truly shocking, and even more so because they are so little known.”
—The New Republic
“A chilling look at a sadly relevant period in American history. Highly recommended for readers interested in women’s studies and public health.”
—Library Journal
“Stern breaks new ground by offering persuasive evidence of the [American Plan’s] breadth, persistence, impact, and evolution from the World War I era into the 1970s. It’s a shattering story.”
—The Boston Globe
“A piece of historical detective work that unearths a horrifying facet of America’s past.”
—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
“An engaging, exemplary report on a too-long buried part of America’s gendered and assaultive treatment of women.”
—Sexual Assault Report from the Civil Research Institute
“Before reading this book, I had never heard of either the American Plan or Nina McCall. After reading it, I will be unlikely to forget either. Scott W. Stern has done a remarkably thorough job of laying out the evidence, brick by brick by brick, that damns the systematic incarceration of women with dubious sexual histories as one of the more shameful chapters in our nation’s history.”
—Anne Fadiman, author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
“In this beautiful and most heart-wrenching narrative, Scott Stern renders newly legible a most disturbing chapter in our nation’s long history of stigmatizing and criminalizing its most vulnerable citizens.”
—Heather Ann Thompson, author of Blood in the Water
“Beautifully written, this book will dismay, outrage, and haunt you. Stern paints the horror of the decades-long American Plan, which surveilled and incarcerated thousands of vulnerable young women without due process. This chilling account of American policing run amok chronicles the logic of the incarcerators and recaptures their victims’ voices. It is an exceptionally powerful intervention in our ongoing national conversation on law, order, and punishment.”
—Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Peter V. and C. Vann Woodward Professor of History, Yale University
“This deeply researched book tells a profoundly important story, intentionally erased, about America in the twentieth century. Through the eyes of Nina McCall, Stern explores the American Plan, ostensibly implemented to control gonorrhea and syphilis but, in fact, causing the harassment, brutal medical mismanagement, and imprisonment of tens of thousands of women. In our own era, when harassment is a great national topic, this book could not be more timely.”
—Mary Pipher, author of Reviving Ophelia and Women Rowing North
“In this time of ‘reckoning’ about sexual assault and harassment, Scott Stern’s book offers a powerful historical reminder of the state’s role in the incarceration of women and girls during World War I and its aftermath. In Stern’s riveting narrative, Nina McCall’s story is both sobering and shocking.”
—Allan M. Brandt, author of No Magic Bullet: A Social History of Venereal Disease in the United States Since 1880
AUTHOR’S NOTE
INTRODUCTION
“Young Lady, Do You Mean to Call Me a Liar?”
CHAPTER 1
“Willing to Go to Jail for Such a Cause”
CHAPTER 2
“Less Fortunate Sisters”
CHAPTER 3
“Waging War on the Women”
CHAPTER 4
“Reaching the Whole Country”
CHAPTER 5
“It Was Too Late”
CHAPTER 6
“Why Should a Woman Be Imprisoned for a Disease?”
CHAPTER 7
“We Will Get Even Yet”
CHAPTER 8
“When Righteous Women Arise”
CHAPTER 9
“Hunting for Girls”
CHAPTER 10
“We Defeat Ourselves”
CHAPTER 11
“The Situation Seems to Be Getting Worse”
CHAPTER 12
“A Total War”
CHAPTER 13
“Venereal Disease Was Not Our Concern”
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
NOTES
INDEX
- “America’s Forgotten Mass Imprisonment of Women Believed to Be Sexually Immoral” History.com, essay
- “The best books of 2018,” The Boston Globle, named a best book of 2018
- “The Trials of Nina McCall,” C-SPAN Book TV, recording of Pittsburgh Arts & Lectures event
- “We Must Live Somehow. We Are Human.” Lapham’s Quarterly, original piece
- “15 Terrifying Nonfiction Books That Read Like Horror,” Bustle, included in reading roundup
- “8 New Books We Recommend This Week,” The New York Times, included in reading roundup
- “Indiana Authorities Said Their Abortion Law Was Designed to Protect Women,” History News Network, excerpt
- “Lock Her Up,” American Scholar/Smarty Pants, podcast interview
- “The legacy of Thomas Parran is more troubling than you thought,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, op-ed
- “How Capitalism Helped to Fuel the Mass Incarceration of Women,” Teen Vogue, adapted excerpt
- “Scott W. Stern on Sex, Surveillance, and Suppression in The Trials of Nina McCall,” Pulp, author feature
- “The American Plan: the government’s incarceration of ‘promiscuous’ women,” WHYY/Radio Times (NPR Philadelphia), radio interview
- “America’s Mass Detention Of ‘Promiscuous’ Women Documented In Pittsburgh Author’s New Book,” WESA (NPR Pittsburgh), write-up
- “Squirrel Hill author unveils a national scandal tied to STDs,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, feature
- “The Essential True Crime Books of Spring 2018,” Crime Reads, book included in reading roundup
- “19 Books Feminists Should Read in May,” Bitch, included in online feature
- “The U.S. Detained ‘Promiscuous’ Women in What One Called a ‘Concentration Camp.’ That Word Choice Matters,” Time, essay
- “Why hero worship is a mistake for the left,” Washington Post, adapted essay ran in “Made by History” section
- “The 12 Best New Nonfiction Books Coming Out In May 2018,” Bustle, included in reading roundup
- “What The Handmaid’s Tale Gets Right—and Wrong—About the History of Women and Resistance,” Time, author quoted and book mentioned in piece on Season 2 of “The Handmaid’s Tale” on 4/24
- Bitch, listed in “30 Most Anticipated Nonfiction Books of 2018” reading roundup, 12/28/2017